


Time Gone By

by sunflowerbright



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-27 02:25:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/657031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerbright/pseuds/sunflowerbright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The stable boy is quiet and hardworking, and it takes almost a full week before Regina even learns his name. But after that, she doesn't forget it again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Gone By

They don’t have many servants. Her mother may love the flourished, pandered life, but the magic she holds means that having servants is really extremely unnecessary, because Cora can get most things done with a snap of her fingers.

It chills Regina to her very bones, sometimes, thinking that her mother could tear entire armies apart, should she find the determination and reason for doing this.

So they don’t have many servants: simply a cook, who would always sneak Regina honey-cakes and a housemaid, old and kind, who would let Regina sit in her lap as she grew up and tell her stories about the Goblin Wars and dragons and princesses trapped in their towers, saved by princes. Regina had never liked those stories, much, and the housemaid had had to modify them over time, so that the princess fought the evil witch who had imprisoned her herself and escaped from the tower without help, building a bridge of the shattered remains of the beast that had guarded her, and walking free. Only then would she find her true love, and they would be happy ever after.

True Love didn’t come like that. It came in the form of a stable boy, a young man whose parents had perished in a fire that had ravaged a town not long from here, a small, insignificant town, that Regina knew her mother had been born and raised in.

(she would sometimes wonder, in the dead of night, if her mother could have stopped the fire, would have stopped the fire, and maybe, even, if her mother had _set_ the fire, had acted out in revenge and rage against a place that represented everything she never had)

(and if she lets that thought stay long enough, convinces herself enough, she can’t feel so angry at her mother for doing it, not if it brought the stable boy to them)

He was quiet, always quiet, and it was almost a full week of her passing him by in the stables, of her bossing him around and telling him that _‘she could take care of her own horse, thank-you very much, she didn’t need his help’_ , before she actually learned his name.

“It’s Daniel,” he said, eyes staring at her in surprise that she had even talked to him, let alone been friendly. “My name is Daniel.”

“Daniel,” she repeated, letting the name roll over her tongue. “I need your help. But you cannot tell my mother, do you understand?”

It had been a risk, asking someone else for help in this. She knew she could not ask her father: love her as he may, he would tell her mother the truth, no matter what. The cook and housemaid were likewise cowed, all afraid of the punishment should Cora find out that she had been lied to.

But Daniel was new, and had little to no interaction with her mother, save for the necessary. Perhaps he did not know to be afraid yet.

His eyes widened, panic flickering through, and Regina inwardly sighed, feeling her heart drop.

“What would you have me help you with, m’lady?” he asked slowly, as if expecting her to demand that he go kill and skin a bear for her, because the snow would start soon and it was cold, inside and outside alike.

“It’s the Winter Market,” she gritted her teeth, already knowing it was a lost cause, but having to try at least. If she could just convince him, maybe there was some hope. “I really want to go, but mother will not let me. And I was wondering… I was thinking, if maybe you could tell her that you were giving me riding lessons, that we were over by the Great Hill and in the forest, scouting the terrain. She never has to know…”

Her voice had started carrying a desperate tone, so she trailed off, not wanting to sound like she was actually _begging_ for his help. He still looked uncertain, eyes flickering to the door as if afraid that Cora would suddenly appear and punish him for as much as even considering it. But then his eyes settled on her again, and they softened in a way that made something warm curl in her chest.

“Alright,” he said. “But… I just do not want to get you in trouble. Have you asked your mother? Maybe she will let you go, if you ask again.”

Regina made a grimace, her hope coming crashing down. “Oh, I knew it. You’re just like the others, so unwilling to take any chances! It’s not like I’m asking you to slay a dragon!”

To her great annoyance, Daniel’s lips twitched, as if he was trying hard not to smile. “And when your mother finds out and wants to skin the both of us, should I let it slip that you compared her to a dragon? Or do you want me to take the blame for that as well?”

“How dare you!” She had to stop herself from yelling and alerting the entire household of what was going on. “You arrogant little…”

She was cut off by the warm sound of his laughter, deep and rumbling. And that was the right word for it – warm. The wind outside was howling, biting skin with the cold, but in here, Daniel’s laughter was warm like the embers on the fire in her cosy room inside.

“I’m joking, m’lady,” he said. “I am merely joking. I’m sorry,” his face turned serious. “I just meant… lies between parent and child is never a good thing.”

“Then you don’t know my mother,” Regina said, unable to keep back the bitterness lacing her words.

“She loves you. She just wants the best for you,” he insisted. “That’s what parents do.”

She opened her mouth to come with a scathing retort, but then she looked at him, at the sad glint in his eyes, the smile long hone from his face. And she remembered, tried to imagine what it must have felt like, a roaring fire on your face, knowing that your loved ones was dying and there was nothing you could do.

“Do you want to help me or not?” she asked instead, letting the subjects of parents lie. “If we both keep the secret, my mother will never know. And it will be _fun_. You’ll practically be getting the day off, but you’ll be getting paid anyway because my mother thinks you’re giving me lessons!”

The smile was small this time, but it was there. “And you’re sure she will not give you permission if you ask her again?”

“I have already asked her a thousand times,” Regina huffed. “She thinks it is not proper behaviour for a lady.”

Daniel frowned. “What isn’t?”

“To have _fun_.”

He laughed this time, a short and sharp one that made her blink and jump a little in surprise. “Well, _fun_ is certainly something everyone should have, regardless of what their mothers think.”

“So you’ll go with me to the Winter Market and you will _swear_ not to tell anyone, especially not my mother?”

“Yes,” Daniel said, head tilted, eyes warm as he looked at her. “I swear.”

 

oOo

 

It’s another year before they even kiss. It would have been sooner, Regina thinks, if it wasn’t for her mother and her _disapproval_ should she find out, or the fact that Regina has never had a friend before, never a real one, someone her own age who would ride and race with her, who would sneak extra food from the kitchen and lie her mother right in the face, just so she wouldn’t get in trouble.

Daniel is her friend, and she is too shy and amazed at him, to even consider trying to push or ask for more. By the time she finally realizes that she wants him to kiss her, she wants it very much, it takes another four months before anything happens still.

And then it only happens, because she grabs him by the front of his cloak and drags him down to her level, teeth clacking against each other as Regina kisses someone for the first time.

Daniel pulls back in surprise (or maybe pain, Regina thinks as she grimaces – she never thought she would be so bad at this), and she immediately lets go of him, the thought striking her for the first time that maybe he hasn’t kissed her because he doesn’t _want_ to kiss her.

It is a horrible thought.

But then he smiles and reaches for her hand, clasping it tightly in his own.

“I was hoping you would do that,” he says, his voice soft and warm. Regina blushes.

“R-really?” she said. “That’s… you have?”

“Since I first saw you,” he admits, and the embers are in her heart now, warming her from her chest to the very tips of her fingers and toes. She grins at him, widely but still a little shy.

“I hope it didn’t disappoint. I am not as skilled at kissing as I am at everything else,” she teases.

He laughs and she beams wider, heart fluttering in anticipation as he pulls her close.

“Let me show you then.”

He does.

oOo

 

They don’t have many servants, because they don’t really need them. They don’t need a stable boy either, because Regina used to be more than willing to take care of the horses on her own: in fact, she could spend her entire life with them, and she would be quite content.

They don’t need a stable boy, but Daniel was there anyway.

And Regina knows that she needs him.

**Author's Note:**

> Christmas (and birthday!) fic for the_silverdoe (on livejournal). I got stuck with the crackish!christmas-fic I was supposed to write for you, and then I was suddenly in the mood for something a little more serious, and this happened, because I know you love Regina. Hope you like - and Merry Christmas!


End file.
